Democracy without secularism is an illusion. It may conduct elections every five years, it may have a Parliament that functions, it may have courts and a Constitution on paper - but without secularism, it has no soul. The great political theorists defined democracy not as the rule of the majority, but as a system where the majority cannot crush the minority. In the Indian context, that guarantee was secularism.
Indian democracy was never conceived as a mere majoritarian headcount. The founding fathers knew that this land of 1.4 billion people could never be governed by religion. It was conceived as a secular covenant, enshrined in the Preamble as "LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship" and in Articles 14, 15, 25 and 26 - where every citizen, irrespective of faith, caste and creed, is equal before the law and equal in the eyes of the nation.
The soul of India is secularism, strengthened by democracy. It is this secular soul that held together a civilization of a hundred languages, a thousand gods and a million traditions for 75 years. Democracy gave that soul a body - institutions like a free Election Commission, an independent judiciary, a free press, universities, and the Right to Dissent. Take secularism out, and democracy becomes a hollow shell - an electoral autocracy. Take secularism out, and democracy becomes a hollow shell.
Today, that soul is under its severest strain. The country is being systematically divided in the name of caste and religion. History is being rewritten through WhatsApp forwards, temples and mosques become election manifestos, food, dress and festivals become markers to identify the "other", and identity becomes a weapon. This politics of polarization may yield electoral dividends for a season, but it cannot go for a long time. History is proof - no nation built on perpetual suspicion of its own people has ever prospered. Yugoslavia, divided on religion and ethnicity, disintegrated. India, united on secularism, survived.
Closing Schools, Opening Divisions:
This divisive politics has a direct cost on the future of our youth, and nowhere is it more visible than in education. Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of the country, had 1,13,938 government primary schools till recently - the last hope of the poorest child, the Dalit child, the Muslim child, for a classroom, a blackboard, and a mid-day meal. Now media reports say that 26,000 of those schools have been closed down in the name of merger and rationalization.
When you close 26,000 schools, you do not just close buildings; you close the future of a generation. According to the ASER report, government schools are already suffering from a learning crisis. Closing them will push lakhs of children, especially girls, into child labour and early marriage. A nation that wants to lead the world in the age of AI, Semicon and Industry 4.0 cannot afford to shut the doors of its primary schools. A bulldozer cannot build a university.
One Law for the Poor, Another for the Plunderers
The economic model that accompanies this politics reveals a deeper betrayal. In this country, laws and rules are for laymen. If a poor farmer, a street vendor, a student who took an education loan, or a small shopkeeper is indebted to pay even one rupee, his property will be confiscated, recovery proceedings will be initiated, CIBIL score destroyed, and his name will be paraded as a defaulter for the realisation of Rs. 1.
But for the privileged few, the law wears a different face. During the last few years, more than Rs. 12 lakh crores of loans belonging to corporates and billionaires have been written off by public sector banks. This is not my figure - this is the figure placed before Parliament by the Government itself. This is public money - the savings of the common man, the farmer and the salaried employee.
The same banking system that is ruthless for the poor is remarkably generous for the rich.
The contradiction becomes obscene when we look at individual cases. Another reported incident is that a loan amount of Rs. 2,20,000 crores of former BJP MP Subhash Chandra's Essel Group was settled for just Rs. 6,500 crores. What a contradiction in law for the poor and the corporate! One law that punishes poverty, another law that rewards plunder. The farmer who cannot pay Rs. 50,000 commits suicide, the billionaire who defaults on Rs. 50,000 crores gets a haircut and a red-carpet settlement.
This is not an accident; it is a design. The result is the most unequal society we have seen since Independence. As per Oxfam and other wealth surveys, the daily income of 7 crore people in this country is only Rs. 62, and the daily income of 116 crore people is only Rs. 171. At the same time, 40% of our country's wealth is vested in the hands of 1% billionaire-corporate elite. Ten percent of Indians own 77% of national wealth. This is not development. This is transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, from the Bahujan to the billionaire.
Religion as a Tool of Distraction
And to hide this brutal economic reality, religion is used as a tool. It is used not only to divide the people but for coming into power by a group. When questions are asked about jobs, schools, hospitals, inflation and loan waivers, the answer is given in the name of
religion. When youth ask where are the 2 crore jobs promised per year, they are told to look for the temple. When farmers ask for MSP, they are called anti-national. Religion, which should be a matter of personal faith, spirituality and moral compass - whether it is Ram, Rahim or Jesus - is reduced to an instrument of political mobilisation and electoral arithmetic. Faith unites, but political religion divides.
That is why the present political bureaucracy is afraid of intellectuals, professionals, youth and the educated. Because an educated mind asks questions. A professional asks for data. A youth asks for jobs. An intellectual refuses to hate his neighbor. A university that debates is seen as a threat. That is why universities are under attack, journalists are booked, comedians are jailed, and students are branded as Tukde Tukde Gang. A thinking citizen is the greatest threat to a politics that thrives on division and blind obedience.
Future Generation
So the question we must ask ourselves is: For how long will this policy of divide and rule in the name of religion continue? Every politics of division has an expiry date. The British tried it for 200 years and failed. People will ultimately return to the fundamental questions of life - education, health, employment and justice. You cannot feed people religion when they have no bread-roti. India must choose - whether it wants to be a republic of schools or a republic of shadows, a nation of jobs or a nation of mobs, a nation of the Constitution or a nation of convenience.
What is the future of Indian democracy and secularism? The answer is simple: The future of secularism based on democracy is the future of Indian Youth. If secularism survives, democracy survives. If democracy survives, the Constitution survives. If the Constitution survives, the youth have a future - a future of equal opportunity, not of inherited hatred.
If secularism falls, democracy will become an illusion, an empty ritual where people vote but have no choice, where people have religion but have no rights, and with it, the dreams of a billion young Indians will collapse.
- Abraham Chettissery
